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(CRIMINAL EVENT) KIDNAPPING RPT TF VALIANT : 0 INJ/DAM

The Afghan War Diary (AWD for short) consists of messages from several important US military communications systems. The messaging systems have changed over time; as such reporting standards and message format have changed as well. This reading guide tries to provide some helpful hints on interpretation and understanding of the messages contained in the AWD.

Most of the messages follow a pre-set structure that is designed to make automated processing of the contents easier. It is best to think of the messages in the terms of an overall collective logbook of the Afghan war. The AWD contains the relevant events, occurrences and intelligence experiences of the military, shared among many recipients. The basic idea is that all the messages taken together should provide a full picture of a days important events, intelligence, warnings, and other statistics. Each unit, outpost, convoy, or other military action generates report about relevant daily events. The range of topics is rather wide: Improvised Explosives Devices encountered, offensive operations, taking enemy fire, engagement with possible hostile forces, talking with village elders, numbers of wounded, dead, and detained, kidnappings, broader intelligence information and explicit threat warnings from intercepted radio communications, local informers or the afghan police. It also includes day to day complaints about lack of equipment and supplies.

The description of events in the messages is often rather short and terse. To grasp the reporting style, it is helpful to understand the conditions under which the messages are composed and sent. Often they come from field units who have been under fire or under other stressful conditions all day and see the report-writing as nasty paperwork, that needs to be completed with little apparent benefit to expect. So the reporting is kept to the necessary minimum, with as little type-work as possible. The field units also need to expect questions from higher up or disciplinary measures for events recorded in the messages, so they will tend to gloss over violations of rules of engagement and other problematic behavior; the reports are often detailed when discussing actions or interactions by enemy forces. Once it is in the AWD messages, it is officially part of the record - it is subject to analysis and scrutiny. The truthfulness and completeness especially of descriptions of events must always be carefully considered. Circumstances that completely change the meaning of an reported event may have been omitted.

The reports need to answer the critical questions: Who, When, Where, What, With whom, by what Means and Why. The AWD messages are not addressed to individuals but to groups of recipients that are fulfilling certain functions, such as duty officers in a certain region. The systems where the messages originate perform distribution based on criteria like region, classification level and other information. The goal of distribution is to provide those with access and the need to know, all of the information that relevant to their duties. In practice, this seems to be working imperfectly. The messages contain geo-location information in the forms of latitude-longitude, military grid coordinates and region.

The messages contain a large number of abbreviations that are essential to understanding its contents. When browsing through the messages, underlined abbreviations pop up an little explanation, when the mouse is hovering over it. The meanings and use of some shorthands have changed over time, others are sometimes ambiguous or have several meanings that are used depending on context, region or reporting unit. If you discover the meaning of a so far unresolved acronym or abbreviations, or if you have corrections, please submit them to wl-editors@sunshinepress.org.

Messages may contain date and time information. Dates are mostly presented in either US numeric form (Year-Month-Day, e.g. 2009-09-04) or various Euro-style shorthands (Day-Month-Year, e.g. 2 Jan 04 or 02-Jan-04 or 2jan04 etc.).

Other times are noted without any time zone identifier at all. The Afghanistan time zone is AFT (UTC + 4:30), which may complicate things further if you are looking up messages based on local time.

Finding messages relating to known events may be complicated by date and time zone shifting; if the event is in the night or early morning, it may cause a report to appear to be be misfiled. It is advisable to always look through messages before and on the proceeding day for any event.

The message starts with a unique ReportKey; it may be used to find messages and also to reference them.

The next field is DateOccurred; this provides the date and time of the event or message. See Time and Date formats for details on the used formats.

Type contains typically a broad classification of the type of event, like Friendly Action, Enemy Action, Non-Combat Event. It can be used to filter for messages of a certain type.

Category further describes what kind of event the message is about. There are a lot of categories, from propaganda, weapons cache finds to various types of combat activities.

TrackingNumber Is an internal tracking number.

Title contains the title of the message.

Summary is the actual description of the event. Usually it contains the bulk of the message content.

Region contains the broader region of the event.

AttackOn contains the information who was attacked during an event.

ComplexAttack is a flag that signifies that an attack was a larger operation that required more planning, coordination and preparation. This is used as a quick filter criterion to detect events that were out of the ordinary in terms of enemy capabilities.

ReportingUnit, UnitName, TypeOfUnit contains the information on the military unit that authored the report.

Wounded and death are listed as numeric values, sorted by affiliation. WIA is the abbreviation for Wounded In Action. KIA is the abbreviation for Killed In Action. The numbers are recorded in the fields FriendlyWIA, FriendlyKIA, HostNationWIA, HostNationKIA, CivilianWIA, CivilianKIA, EnemyWIA, EnemyKIA

Captured enemies are numbered in the field EnemyDetained.

The location of events are recorded in the fields MGRS (Military Grid Reference System), Latitude, Longitude.

The next group of fields contains information on the overall military unit, like ISAF Headquarter, that a message originated from or was updated by. Updates frequently occur when an analysis group, like one that investigated an incident or looked into the makeup of an Improvised Explosive Device added its results to a message.

OriginatorGroup, UpdatedByGroup

CCIR Commander's Critical Information Requirements

If an activity that is reported is deemed "significant", this is noted in the field Sigact. Significant activities are analyzed and evaluated by a special group in the command structure.

Affiliation describes if the event was of friendly or enemy nature.

DColor controls the display color of the message in the messaging system and map views. Messages relating to enemy activity have the color Red, those relating to friendly activity are colored Blue.

Classification contains the classification level of the message, e.g. Secret

S-5 AAF
A-2 NGO kidnapped 1x LN and 1x Japanese
L- vic 42s XD 45020 35660 Dari Nor
T - 260645LAUG08
U- unkown
R - Reported by NDS and JPCC
NDS reports kidnappers are on foot heaeding north, north east.
UPDATE 0335Z ( FROM MR BINNS )
locals following kidnappers and engaging with SAF, kidnapper heading north on road beween ZARI BABA and SHURAT
PCC told by NDS kidnapping happened in Koz Kunar
0400z QRF moving from PRT to Koz Kunar DC ( ANP station ) to link in with ANP to assist
0555z PCC radioed Col Taliwar relayed a rough grid at XD 54003300 for area and requested assistance. Notified PCC that QRF is enroute to Kuz Kunar DC to assist.
0510z PCC reports that Col Taliwar is putting together 100 ANA and 50 ANP to assist in locating NGO's
0518z QRF reached Kuz Kunar DCXD46394 27307 ANP told QRF that they have eyes on the AAF that took the NGO's. QFR is being led to that location now and they will call it up as soon as they reach OBJ
0550z QRF at grid XD 48680 30804 requesting shadow, hunter or CCA.
Shadow reports 3 PAX moving quickly in area
0610z QRF relayed they need CCA to pickup ANP and move them to the top of Mountain XD4890 3121. UNK# of PAX moving NE towards Spader AO.
QRF FM 42975
0645z PCC reports ANP have surrounded the hill where 4 PAX (kidnappers) carring 2 PAX (NGO) but ANP needs more water and Ammo to continue to exact location. Allegedly, one of the NGOs can not walk. AAF is attempting to get the NGO's to the town of Showalnaw at 42SXD 51738 33744
0715z Report from ANP: the AAF fled the hill top and left the Japanese NGO alone at or near XD 51738 33744.
0720Z BDE is receiving a report that the Japanese NGO has been killed. Not confirmed at this time.
1143z ANP report through QRF that the Afghan NGO escaped from his captors and is with the ANP now but the Japan. NGO is still with the AAF.
1120z ANP reports that they have the Jap. NGOATT there has been no conformation (US eyes on) ATT.
1535z Valiant 3 reports from site that the only part of the days events that he can confirm is that ANP had 1 AAF in custody. The search will continue in the morning.
270030z Valiant 3 SPed to Koz Kunar w/ ANP/ANA to continue search of site.
270350zAUG08
Valiant 3 on ground linked in w/ ANP - ANP have sent approximately 100 personnel to continue search for kidnapped NGO
270515z PCC reports that ANP have found the Dead body of the NGO on the hill but are unable to give the exact location were they are, because they don't know. Attempting to confirm the report w/ Valiant 3 on the ground ATT.
270520z PCC relayed grid for body in the 42SXD 49000 30000 area.
270525z John Binn (ANSO Head) states (from anouther ANSO worker on site that knew the Jap. NGO) that the NGO was murdered and his body is on the hill in the Bajir Bawagam area.
270545z Vaiant 3 reports body is on the hill and as yet the only info he has is that the body has a leg wound and massive head trama. They are waiting for the body to be brought down to ID as the NGO
270738z Valiant 3 reports Jap. NGO is dead and body is at his location. Medic on site made assessment of Possible Cause of Death and will report that up when back on FOBPRT
271210z Valiant 3 reports The Afghan National Driver from ANSO escape his captors and was secured by ANP yesterday. The NGO ANSO worker was killed. He had GSW to the leg (unclear which) and head trama. Medic thinks from condition of body that NGO had fallen struck his head and probably blead out from the GSW. Gov. has information on AAF individuals and Valiant 3's interp. has notes to give through S2 channels. Body is being moved to JBAD. Final grid for location where body was found 42S XD 51603470 .
271310z The Driver is being detained w/ the AAF that was captured at the NDS facility at this time.
S2 will debrief for intel from Valiant 3 Metting with the Gov. and post findings
EVENT CLOSED
UPDATE
HCT will go to the NDS compond and question the NGO driver on 28Aug08